Read Twenty Miles for Free Online Page A

like someone ran over it with a car,’ I said.
    ‘Open it.’
    The name Cam Hennig sprawled across the inside of the cover in jagged lettering, three phone numbers, tagged with names, layered crooked beneath; an alligator drawn on the neighbouring page locked its jaws around the words of the title. Pages flipped lethargic, sodden with orange and yellow highlighter and the oil of fingertips.
    ‘Do you know this Cam person?’ I asked, pointing.
    Jacob tilted his head at me. ‘No.’
    ‘Does he have the answers to the exam in here or something?’ I laughed.
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘Oh.’ Silence, and we both looked down at the book, its punched-up face.
    ‘I guess it’s just more interesting this way. It’s not just you in there.’ He tapped the cover. ‘All alone.’
    We hovered for a bit, the text between us, and the books ganged up on me. All the eyes that had swam through them. This wasn’t how I’d imagined a typical, knee-weakening first date. Then again, when I imagined a knee-weakening first date, the girl I saw was never me. But then Jacob touched my elbow and my arm hairs sighed and we walked toward the cashier, a slow amble. I had no idea if this was a date.
    ‘You having some fun with the girls?’
Girls.
Like he was my uncle.
    ‘The team?’
    ‘Yeah. They seem like a laugh. I hung out with some of them last year a couple times. Hal. And what do you call her – Toad?’
    ‘Toad, yeah. And Hal.’ I shrugged. ‘Yeah, they’re. Well.’ I took a deep breath, tried to sum up the essence. ‘Scary.’
    Jacob stopped walking and laughed.
    ‘They are,’ I said.
    ‘Fair enough, fair enough.’ Jacob swatted my arm lightly with the book.
    I shrugged.
    ‘You should never be scared to
live the dream,
’ he said in a fake grave tone, laughing again. He didn’t discriminate much, laughter-wise. It made me suspicious. Too girly.
    ‘Well.’ I considered this. ‘They asked me to play with them. So.’
    ‘So you’re saying you’re not living the dream?’
    ‘Are you?’
    ‘What?’
    Annoying. ‘What’s
the dream
?’ I said.
    ‘What?’ he said again, winked this time. I glared at him and he laughed.
    ‘Okay.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The season after that last year I played with you?’
    I nodded.
    ‘My old man’s car busted down. Just gave up one day in the summer and we didn’t get another one for months and so I couldn’t play in town any more. I cried.’ He laughed. ‘I’m sorry, but I did. Big time. For days. I mean, of all things, right? And so my dad – he’s a good guy, Merv – he set up some nets in our back lane, right, so we could play street hockey whenever we wanted. My cousins and me. We were out there every day, into the night. Merv set up some lights for us, so it was a pretty good set-up, I guess. Anyway, my Uncle Grant comes one night while we’re all asleep and crashes through it all in his truck. We’d put it off to the side in one place to get it out of the way and he steamrolled it all anyway – the nets, the lights, all our sticks. Gets out of his truck laughing his head off, like it’s this great joke. He used to play when he was younger. I guess he was pretty decent but then he found booze young and that was it. How it goes. So now he’s just busting everything up in the middle of the night and we wake up the next morning and all our shit’s completely totalled and hockey’s done.’ He shrugged. ‘It got me away from there for a bit. Hockey. The only way I was.’ Shrugged again and slid the textbook across the counter, looked at me. ‘No idea if that’s a dream.’
    I wanted to fix that car. As Jacob counted money into the cashier’s palm, I had this off-kilter, impossible desire to go back and fix his parents’ car, to put him on the ice with me that lost season. It didn’t make any sense.
    ‘W e can always take this back, if you want,’ Buck had said and handed Sig the gift, a shy grin. Sig placed it on her lap.
    ‘Geez. I don’t